The Berlin-based manufacturer added yet another singing bird to its collection. I had a chance to spend some time with it, listening as it performed in a beautiful environment with a largely familiar setup. Now it is time for me to share with you what I have learned about the SoundSpace Systems Rossignol.
Introduction
Some of you may remember two other reviews of SoundSpace Systems loudspeakers: the first one from 2019 of the Pirol model (you can find it HERE), and the other of the smallest Robin (see it HERE). In both cases, despite their size and weight, the brave crew of the German company led by its owner and chief designer, Dr. Michael Plessmann, delivered them to my room (up on the fourth floor, no elevator). The third model, available at the time, which is still today the flagship, Aidoni, weighs around 250 kg apiece, and thus delivery to my place was rather unlikely to happen despite no lack of will on either side.
At some point, around a year ago, to be more precise, Michael added yet another, fourth model to the lineup—one that sits below the Aidoni and above Pirol (although, as Michael says, much closer to the former than to the latter) in the lineup. He named it Rossignol. As he told me, he started to work on it upon request from customers and distributors, for a speaker (almost) matching the performance of the Aidoni, but with a single midrange driver. The point was to allow a smaller distance between the listener and the speakers, or, in other words, to listen to the new speaker in rooms not as large as Aidoni required. To achieve such an ambitious goal, the designer reached for some very special drivers that not many people are even familiar with—namely the so-called field-coils.
Many people don’t even know this type of driver, or maybe have heard of them but never actually had a chance to experience their performance. If you’re one of them, try to change that, because once you get familiar with the sound such drivers reproduce, it will most likely be an unforgettable experience. Not many people, even audiophiles, have such a chance, as these drivers are rarely used nowadays. For one, they are quite expensive, and secondly, their implementation is very demanding, at least if you want to achieve truly good results. One of the key challenges for any designer planning to use them is the power supply (required for field-coil drivers). Its quality is of paramount importance. Some of you may remember a review I wrote a few years ago of another loudspeaker, although completely different in terms of design, featuring a field-coil driver, namely the Closer Acoustics Allegra EX (you can read the review HERE).
It is the Supravox field-coil driver that Michael chose for his new project to get as close to Aidoni’s performance level as possible using only a single midrange driver (Aidoni uses two of those placed above and below the tweeter). By the way, the SoundSpace Systems chief designer liked the results of the field-coil implementation in Rossignol so much that he currently offers an upgrade for (willing) Aidoni users. He can, personally, replace one of the midrange drivers used previously for the Supravox and upgrade the crossover accordingly. Based on my experience with Rossignol and the aforementioned Allegra EX, I believe that most, if not all, Aidoni owners would find the upgrade worth the money they have to spend on it. But that’s just me and my (educated) guess.
Design & Features
SoundSpace Systems Rossignol is a 3-way floor-standing, semi-active loudspeaker. The latter means that the bass section, featuring four 12-inch drivers per channel, is driven by two powerful built-in amplifiers. One could expect it to be smaller than Aidoni, but the differences are not that obvious. The older, „bigger” brother measures 148×44×67 cm (H x W x D), while the latest addition to the lineup measures 158x43x48 cm, which means that the new speaker is even taller, although not quite as deep. Also, Rossignol weighs almost 200 kg versus Aidoni’s 240 kg (each).
You will find Rossignol’s technical specifications below this review, but even before you start to read my assessment, you should know that these are high-efficiency speakers (100 dB/W/m) that are pretty easy to drive due to their 6-ohm nominal and 3.2-ohm minimum impedance, and they cover a frequency range of 20 to 32,000 Hz. If you like to listen to music loud, Rossignol has you covered with their maximum SPL of 112 dB. As for more details regarding the design of the latest model, you will find them below in a record of my conversation with Michael Plessmann, the SoundSpace System’s owner and chief designer.
Marek Dyba (MD): Michael, could you tell us how the Rossignol model came to be?
Michael Plessmann (MP): Rossignol is a speaker that was developed because some of the clients wanted Aidoni’s (which is the top model; ed.) performance, but at a closer listening distance. That’s how the whole Project Rossignol was started. The idea was to get the best qualities of Aidoni and transfer them into a speaker that doesn’t feature the D’Appolito configuration of the midrange/tweeter section, but still offers all the other benefits of Aidoni.
MD: What benefits or qualities are you referring to?
MP: These are benefits of what some people call a hybrid speaker. I call it the best technology speaker because, in the high frequency, the midrange, and the bass, I believe I’m using the best available technologies, and they are combined into one speaker. It’s a very different philosophy or approach from what you find in most other speakers. I’m not even aware if anybody else does it like this. I know that some people put a subwoofer underneath to support the rest of the range, but the rest is based on one technology. Some open-baffle manufacturers put a tweeter on top, or broadband manufacturers put a broadband tweeter on top to support the range, but that someone goes all the way to use the best tweeter concept, the best midrange concept, and the best bass woofer, and combines them all into one speaker—I think there are not many out there who do this.
While developing the Rossignol and selecting components for it, I had the privilege to do what I always wanted to do: further improve midrange performance. It was important to me because, in my eyes, the midrange is the core of the music. If you do get the midrange right, you have already started at a wonderful point, and that’s why, when designing the Rossignol, instead of using a conventional midrange driver, I decided to use a field-coil one.
MD: I have had some experience with field-coil drivers, and I know why I appreciate them so much, but still, please explain why you thought it was the best way to go about midrange in your latest model.
MP: The thing with a field-coil is that once you’ve heard it, you get addicted. It is amazing and beautiful how resolving such drivers are when properly used. It is hard to implement such a driver in the midrange because it requires a separate power supply, and you can clearly hear its every imperfection as it influences the sound. It took me a while to develop a power supply that delivers sufficiently clean power to make the midrange sound the way I wanted it to. The same as in the other SoundSpace Systems speakers, the midrange section is configured as an open baffle. Therefore, there is no spring force on the back of the membrane, and the driver is completely free to move.
MD: Let’s talk about the design of the Rossignol.
MP: I decided to use a completely minimalist crossover, the simplest possible. I mean, in the Rossignol, it just protects the midrange driver from the lowest frequencies to prevent those delicate paper membranes from breaking. That’s the entire crossover for midrange. Everything else plays openly. The field-coil technically is the midrange driver. Technically, because it plays all the way down to 50 Hz and at the top it plays all the way up to 4000 Hz, therefore one could argue that it performs almost like a broadband driver. That’s also one of the reasons why I use a pre-chamber in front of the midrange driver. That’s an acoustic crossover, which helps me keep the electrical crossover small and manage the output of the midrange.
MD: That’s the midrange, which is the biggest novelty in this model, because you have never used field-coil drivers before. How about the tweeter?
MP: The tweeter in the Rossignol is the same one that I have been using in the Aidoni. It’s an 18-kilogram (!) magnetostatic driver. Its membrane is extremely light. It works in a very dense magnetic field, so it does what people believe is the best way to create perfect sound with strong magnets and a very light membrane. The crossover for the tweeter is again just a protection against lower frequencies. Additionally, it also benefits from the acoustical transformation achieved with a horn in front of the driver—one that I use in all my speakers. The horn does two things: it extends the range down and helps to manage the directionality to match that of the midrange driver. It is very important because the tweeter covers the range from 900 hertz all the way up to 35,000 hertz, so if you do the math—from 900 hertz to about 4,000 hertz—there are always two drivers playing. As I said, for the tweeter, I also use a very minimalist crossover. There is no resistor in that design because resistors destroy the expensive electrical signal that we put into it. What do I mean by expensive? Well, typically, our amplifiers that drive the speakers are very expensive; hence the “expensive” signal.
MD: Last but not least, the bass module. It is probably the most similar part of these speakers to your other models, as all of them utilize active bass sections.
MP: My philosophy regarding bass is the same no matter the speaker model because if we talk about real bass, we talk about large volumes of moved air, and there is no substitute for it. When people say a bookshelf speaker delivers nice bass, it is not truly so. Such a speaker can create a nice illusion of bass, but it can’t play actual low bass. It is our brain that recreates the bass. The true bass requires movement of air, and that’s why all of my speakers feature large bass drivers. In Rossignol, we are talking about four 12-inch drivers per speaker operating in a sealed housing.
There are lots of white papers about why this is the only way to create proper bass, because you don’t want any out-of-phase signal. Like with all of my other speakers, the bass drivers are inserted in a way that ensures what we call force cancellation. They are working in a push-push configuration, which cancels the force onto the cabinet, eliminating this huge problem. There are some enormous speaker designs in which the mechanical force of the bass driver in the cabinet is asymmetrical. If you do it symmetrically, the force cancels itself, and as a result, there is far less distortion in the lower frequency range.
Rossignol, just like Aidoni, features two 1000-watt amplifiers in the bass compartment. That’s the cost of using a sealed chamber for the bass. As you know, in a sealed housing, you need a lot of energy/power to push the bass out. It’s about the amount of pressure you need to create, and therefore you need such powerful amps. Now, the bass section is connected to the rest with a 6 dB crossover. Considering this particular design, it is not so easy to build it as a passive design. That is why it is done using a DSP, a very, very fast DSP. The roll-off point in the Rossignol is below 40 hertz, while at 6 dB there are still significant amounts of sound at higher frequencies. So that’s the idea of Rossignol.
I mean, everything else is like it is in all of my other speakers. It’s a constraint-layer cabinet, in most cases with natural timber as the external layer. For all of my speakers, I use a brass or bronze base that the entire cabinet rests on to control the residual mechanical forces in the speaker. In all of my speakers currently, the bass sections are connected to the amplifiers through the speaker terminals. In this way, users do not need separate wiring, or so-called jumpers, for the bass section to receive a signal from an amplifier driving the whole speaker.
MD: What kind of internal wiring have you used in the Rossignol?
MP: It’s copper-silver wiring. We hand-wire all the connections, and the wiring for the tweeter is different from that for the midrange driver. For the bass, we use a different one yet. It is so because we figured out that the tweeter performance gets better with a different wire configuration. Therefore, we didn’t want to use a one-size-fits-all approach. As I said, it is all hand-wired, and it features the same geometry that we use in our cables, which dates back to the early days of telecommunication in the 1920s. Back then, they figured out the right geometry through experimentation.
MD: It sounds like tinned copper…
MP: They used tin those days; that’s absolutely correct. But our wiring is not tinned; it’s copper wiring with a very heavy silver plating. The geometry they used is very smart because they didn’t use shielding, and they still didn’t have many of the problems that we have today. They also had a hard time managing cross-talk, and they were very smart about how they solved it. You can find many of these old cable geometries out there.
MD: Okay, no shielding 100 years ago may not have been an issue because there was far less electronic pollution these days.
MP: Absolutely, because there were no airports creating lots of radiation, we didn’t have mobile telephone networks, and so on—I agree with you. Still, the technologies they used were very smart. It was very hard to manufacture, and in modern times, where we do everything with machines, we don’t apply these techniques anymore. We could, but we don’t do this.
Which brings to mind yet another key design element of the Rossignol. Embedded into them is what I call the Mozart, which is a power filtration technology. I need it for multiple reasons. First of all, because of the speaker’s high sensitivity, it is extremely sensitive to any distortion coming from anywhere. Since the active subwoofer is now jumpered internally, the noise from the bass section could leak into the higher part of the range. That is why I needed to isolate them completely from each other. It was in the early days that I found some of my speaker designs to sound a little nervous at the top of the range. Now, it’s completely gone. The nervousness came from my Class D amplifiers, but since I started using the isolators, it’s dead quiet, and it offers a more relaxed performance—making it even easier to listen to.
MD: I suppose that since you started to use field-coil drivers that require an additional power supply, you needed to also isolate those.
MP: Absolutely, it was one more issue to solve. To do that, I have decided to use a multitude of power conditioners and power conditioning devices installed inside the cabinet. Not only to deliver clean power to the components inside, but also to isolate the power supplies from the rest of the system internally.
MD: So as I understand it, the power supply for the field-coil driver is also built into the speaker; in other words, all the power comes through a single power cable. And then…?
MP: It’s split, and then it is conditioned differently for various sections. What’s more, after the power supplies, it’s cleaned again, because the power supplies themselves, depending on how they are constructed, are also creating problems. Now, that took a lot of work and time to develop. The field-coil driver that I’m using has been on the market for years. It’s not that this is a new driver; it’s a Supravox driver. I don’t make a secret out of this. It is a great driver, but not many people use it, not because it causes problems itself, but because the power supply for it is the problem. It’s a solvable problem, though, if you want to.
MD: Are you willing to share any other information regarding the components used in the Rossignol?
MP: As far as the capacitors go, inside, I’m using, at least in the sensitive parts, all these wonderful silver-gold capacitors that you find out there.
MD: For the test, we will use the new Divine Acoustics Newton feet, but I assume that on a regular basis, you use some other feet—the ones that you constructed.
MP: Yeah, I use feet we developed ourselves, like this one (Michael shows me one). Just press it on the top. You see, they move slightly now because there are small balls inside. Which is very similar to how Stillpoint designs their feet. I think it is a wonderful solution, and it works really well. I think people can play with what they put their speakers on, although I don’t like spikes for speakers, so I don’t recommend them, but that’s me.
MD: The sensitivity of the Rossignol is very high, isn’t it?
MP: Yes, it is 100 dB per watt and meter, not per 2.83 volts per meter.
MD: Which means that, considering also an active bass section, you don’t need a lot of power to drive them. So what is your recommendation regarding the minimum output of an amplifier to drive them properly—20, 30, or 50 W?
MP: It’s hard to give you a number. Instead, let me offer my customers’ experiences. One of them tried out the little Trafomatic single-ended amplifier, delivering 7.5 watts, and said he missed nothing in the sound. Another client used it with a 2A3 amp, which translated into about 3 W per channel. So, you can try any high-quality amplifier regardless of its output—it is the performance that matters. Sure, if you’re going into large orchestral works, I recommend that you use at least 30 to 40 clean watts. And if you like to listen to Metallica at more than 100 dB, I recommend that you go as far as 100 watts.
I’ve also paired them with powerful Class AB amplifiers, and the combination worked well. However, once you get addicted to the beauty of these five-watt amplifiers and eight-watt amplifiers—which means tube-based and Class A you may not need or want anything else. Don’t get me wrong, the solid-state amps offer beauty of their own, so if that’s your preference, go for it. Just remember, the better components you use in front of the SoundSpace Systems Rossignol, the bigger the reward.
Sound
Circling back to the first paragraph, neither Aidoni nor Rossignol could be delivered to my place. The only way for me to review the latter (as offered by Michael) was to come to Berlin and assess them at SoundSpace Systems’ headquarters. I rarely agree to conduct my reviews outside my listening room. It’s not because it is the best room in the world, but because it is familiar to me. I believe that to assess any audio component truly reliably, it should be listened to in a familiar environment (which means both the room and the setup). In other words, in a reviewer’s reference system. The latter doesn’t necessarily have to be composed of the best and (usually) most expensive components, but it has to be familiar to him/her so that the sonic character and the impact on the system’s performance of the tested item can actually be assessed.
Michael understood it too, and therefore he offered to gather (to loan from manufacturers and distributors) as many of the components I was familiar with as possible. Those who have read my previous SoundSpace System-related texts already know that I visited this room a few times before, which is why there was some level of the necessary familiarity with the space/room I was about to listen to Rossignol, too.
The setup
In his system, Michael has been using the J.Sikora Reference turntable with the J.Sikora KV12 Max tonearm and Aidas Mammoth Gold cartridge for years. I’ve owned the J.Sikora Standard Max deck for 11 years, plus first the KV12 (you can find my review HERE), and next the KV12 Max (review HERE) and the KV9 (see HERE) tonearms, and if that were not enough, currently I also host the Reference in my room for the upcoming review. At some point, I also reviewed the Aidas Mammoth Gold cartridge (see HERE). To complete the analog setup, LampizatOr delivered their latest phono stage, the VPL or Vinyl Phono Lite, which was exactly the same unit that had spent the previous 3 months in my room (the review is coming soon). So while this setup wasn’t the same as the one I’ve been using every day, it was familiar (and good!) enough to base my assessment of the speakers’ performance on it.
The digital front end for this review was composed of the XACT S1 EVO Music Server, the latest, even more advanced version of the S1 that I reviewed a while ago (see HERE), and the XACT N1 Network Switch, which I was admittedly not familiar with. The server delivered the signal to the LampizatOr Horizon 360 D/A Converter that I reviewed for HighFidelity.pl some time ago. Also, I have used LampizatOr’s various DACs for more than 10 years, so I recognized it as yet another familiar component.
Marcin Ostapowicz, the man behind the XACT, JCAT, and JPLAY brands, together with his devices, also sent his USB and LAN cables. Since I was not familiar with those, I brought my own reference—David Laboga Custom Audio Akoya USB (reviewed HERE)—and the manufacturer also sent me the latest addition to their lineup, which premiered recently in Vienna at the High End Show: namely, the Akoya LAN (that I will review soon). I used both USB and LAN cable sets interchangeably.
While the SoundSpace Systems Rossignol loudspeakers are a semi-active design, they still require an amplifier to drive the midrange and tweeter drivers and to deliver the signal for the bass section. In my reference system, I use GrandiNote Shinai, a Class A integrated amplifier, and a split system from Circle Labs: the P300 preamplifier and the M200 power amplifier (reviewed HERE). Courtesy of the German distributor, LEN Hifi, we got the Circle Labs A200 integrated amplifier (reviewed HERE) at our disposal. As an alternative, we used another integrated amp—one that Michael Plessmann uses (interchangeably with his tube amp) daily—namely the SPEC EX-RSA1000, which I reviewed a while ago for yet another magazine, so yet another familiar device.
As for the other cables, we used mostly products from another familiar brand, WK Audio, and their top line, TheRED (reviewed HERE). They sent us balanced and unbalanced analog interconnects, plus speaker and power cables. I should add that WK Audio TheRED speaker cable recently replaced TheRAY from the same brand in my reference system, which only increased the level of familiarity. The power cables were plugged into the SoundSpace System’s own AC power conditioner, Mozart.
Last, but not least, the best hidden element of the setup was the new anti-vibration feet named Newton Diamond by Divine Acoustics. They worked really well for Michael’s speakers at the Vienna High End Show, and so we decided to use them for this review as well. They are also coming soon to my listening room for a review, as I am searching for some high-quality feet for my GrandiNote MACH4 speakers.
Long story short, Michael did his best to accommodate me and my reviewer’s needs and requirements. Therefore, I spent three comfortable and interesting days listening to the Rossignols in various setups. One of the three afternoons I spent in the merry company of representatives from J. Sikora (Robert and Adam), LampizatOr (Paweł), XACT (Marcin), Aidas (Donatas), and, obviously, our host, SoundSpace Systems’ Michael. It is sort of a spoiler, but the general opinion on Michael’s latest addition to the lineup was pretty unanimous, and I don’t think that the others were just polite to our host, as they all seemed as impressed as I was.
Go on and check SoundSpace System’s social media, and you will see short videos with almost all of them (Paweł from LampizatOr had to leave quite early, and therefore he didn’t get a chance to record his part) expressing their opinions. Despite the fact that I would prefer to spend a few weeks with Rossignol in my own room, I believe that the time I had in Berlin allowed me to offer you an honest and comprehensive assessment of Rossignol’s performance. So let’s finally get to it.
Listening sessions
I listened to Aidoni, Pirol, and Robins in this room before (in various setups, except for J.Sikora Reference turntable, which was a constant element in all but the first of those listening sessions), and, every time, one of the many qualities I loved about them was how convincing the presentation of the space was, how good the imaging was, and how well they conveyed all the acoustical cues captured in the recordings. The room is quite large, open to one side, and, in theory, far from ideal, with many large naked windows; and yet, whenever I played a recording with a well-captured space, a huge, but realistically huge in both width and depth (also height, but that’s another story), soundstage opened in front of me. As with one of my all-time favorite albums, often used in my reviews, entitled „Flamenco Puro Live”.
Since even the smaller models delighted me with these particular aspects of music playback, my expectations for the Rossignols were very high. And they delivered big time! It felt like the flamenco dancers stomped the wooden floor just in front of me, and the wood responded in kind. Myriad dust particles rose from the floor and danced in the air to the rhythm of the music, in sync with the dancers. The raw energy of this performance was breathtaking; the dynamics were mind-blowing, and the pace was accurate.
I witnessed a similar performance live only once years ago, but it’s been etched in my memory ever since, and what I heard with Rossignols brought this extraordinary experience right back. A dozen or so years ago, I brought this album (on CD) with me to the Warsaw Audio Video Show and played it in every room they let me. Some setups dealt with it better than others; some even did a very good job, and yet, compared to the tested speakers, none of those (and some were very expensive, and at the time I thought them to be very, very good) came even close in terms of the realism of the presentation.
How about singing and guitar playing, which may not be as impressive in terms of dynamics as the dancing on this album, yet are equally important in terms of expressing emotions? Both were delivered exquisitely, with a beautiful natural timbre, very clearly pronounced texture, breathing and living on the stage. Every little detail of the performance was available for me to grab if I needed to. Importantly, all this wealth of information was presented with stunning clarity, put within my reach but never pushed on me. Still, it was the rendition of the stage, where it all happened, that extended from the line connecting the speakers to far, far behind and beyond them (and the windows, into the garden behind them), combined with palpable, three-dimensional imaging, served with this incredible, very live-like energy, that left me stunned.
This first album was enough already to make it clear to me that the resolution of Rossignol is outstanding (although I’m writing these words after listening to several more records), on par with only a handful of the very best loudspeakers I’d ever heard before. I also recognized that it was so, at least in (a large) part, due to the field-coil drivers introduced for the first time in SoundSpace Systems’ history in the reviewed Rossignols. I had listened to some well-applied drivers of this kind before, and they had always amazed me with their resolution. Importantly, with such drivers, it is usually not a clinical, hyper-puristic resolution that some designers offer in their products featuring other supposedly even “better-resolving” or “better-performing” components.
What you ultimately get from field-coils in a particular application is the result of their designer’s choices (or skills/experience combination). They can push them more and make them even more resolving, but it comes at the cost of losing some richness of tone in the lower frequencies they reproduce, which translates into a seemingly more transparent, purer presentation of every tiny detail, but comes at the cost of richness, saturation, and ultimately naturalness of the sound. That’s not the path Michael had chosen. Instead, he found a perfect (in my opinion) balance between phenomenal resolution, transparency, and clarity of the presentation, and its richness, saturation, flow, and coherence, that resulted in an exceptionally resolving but also amazingly natural outcome.
One may say that the field-coil driver covers “only” midrange, but while it is the range extremes that catch the ears of most listeners, it is the midrange that delivers most of the musical information and ultimately determines how good the overall performance is. In this particular case, at least in my opinion, the choice for midrange playback is what makes the Rossignol, at least in a mid-size room, even more engaging than Aidoni! Not necessarily better, mind you, as the Aidonis deliver a presentation with a bigger scale, even more momentum, and a more powerful slam at the very bottom of the frequency range while maintaining a very good balance throughout the entire range. And yet, in terms of midrange performance, and the pure pleasure of experiencing the music and emotions that come with it, I would put Rossignol a tiny little step ahead of the top model, a little closer to the ever-chased “perfect sound”.
To confirm what I already suspected after the aforementioned very first album, I kept playing track after track, from records and from files, and they allowed me to claim with absolute certainty that Michael Plessmann, a man who takes a lot of time to tune his speakers at the development stage before he puts them in front of a selected group of music lovers to get their feedback, and then fine-tunes them again so that they are perfectly balanced and deliver music in a very natural and realistic way, did the same with Rossignols and succeeded. Therefore, as already stated, in my opinion, the field-coil drivers elevate Rossignols’ performance, particularly in the midrange area, to a new level compared with Robins and Pirols, but even (to a point, but still) compared with Aidoni. And that’s quite an achievement, as all who know the latter well would most likely agree.
Don’t get me wrong, the Aidoni are still the top model with overall superior performance, but even the designer himself recognized what he achieved with the field-coils in Rossignol, as evidenced by an upgrade he developed for Aidoni and would offer to his customers. He is planning to offer a replacement for one of the midrange drivers (the Aidoni features two of those) with a field-coil, which obviously also requires a new crossover and power supply for the driver. I did not get a chance to listen to such an upgraded version, but I expect it will raise the already very high bar even higher and restore the balance, so to speak, putting Aidoni even clearer ahead again. Back to Rossignols.
Next on my list was Muddy Water’s „Live at the Checkerboard Lounge”, a fantastic live album with many blues legends and the musicians from the Rolling Stones performing side by side. Rossignols proved to have a great knack for blues, so to speak. Excellent PRAT, fantastic, highly expressive vocals, and guitars with a rich tone and body (so many guitars!), each so precisely portrayed, and again, all of those set within a perfect rendition of a very realistic space where the whole event took place. I mean, not only the stage, since it wasn’t that big, and when the Rolling Stones members joined, it got pretty crowded, but also the space of the whole club, the atmosphere, the response from the audience, and so on. It all felt so real, and it allowed me to have so much fun constantly tapping my feet, snapping my fingers, and rocking my head back and forth! It’s such a simple yet great piece of music, and with Rossignol, it simply came alive and pulled me in.
Later, listening to Renaud Garcia-Fons’ „Arcoluz” with the tested speakers, I “saw” his large double bass and the bow moving across the strings, and I not only heard but also felt the power of his performance—that’s what four, or actually eight, 12-inch drivers do; they push so much air into the room that the transfer of energy feels close to a real one experienced at concerts. I also loved the perfect (if there is such a thing) balance between the strings and the wood, which translated into a dynamic, pulsating performance with natural energy, which therefore seemed incredibly involving and very lifelike. Let’s not forget the faithful (most likely) and convincing (surely)! rendition of the instrument’s rich, natural timbre and texture.
Rossignols’ resolution allowed me to study every tiny little detail of the sound and the subtlety of the performance without overwhelming me with those. It’s not an analytical tool to study the recordings—at least, that is not its primary function—but rather to enjoy the music, the performance, and get this unique, familiar feeling that is shared by all frequent attendees of live concerts: one of complete immersion and participation rather than just witnessing something that happened at another time and place. I don’t know about you, but that is exactly how I like my music served to me, so you can’t blame me for loving it so much.
Later, when I played the opening track from the „Dune Part II” soundtrack, it proved beyond doubt that when it comes to moody, dreamy recordings, Rossignol did an equally convincing job as they had done before with any other music, including powerful songs by Metallica or AC/DC. These are truly versatile speakers, as with the movie score track, they combined thunderous, very low sounds with the melodious, slowly developing story so skillfully told with the music that I didn’t need the picture to see the desert of Arrakis. Yet, when their job was to transfer the sheer energy, dynamics, power, pace, and rhythm of the rock, blues, or even heavy metal tracks, they impressed me again and did so effortlessly. That’s yet another of their qualities—due to their size and design, playing music, any music, at any volume level (almost any—I played some tracks really loud, but I did not risk losing my hearing), the presentation always seems effortless and relaxed. No compression, no distortion (that I could hear), no clipping (as the Rossignol are easy to drive). They allow you to connect with the performers and the music in a very direct, intimate way, and it takes no effort at all to do so.
I keep repeating my delight with the space these loudspeakers render, but it’s because no matter the music genre or even the sound quality (yet another of their abilities—when it comes to non-audiophile quality releases, Rossignols, the same as all other SoundSpace Systems’ models, bring music to life and allow you to enjoy it), as long as the spatial cues were captured properly in the recording, what the German speakers did with them was stunning. And so, with the opening track of this movie score, I found myself in a huge, hot desert (40°C in Berlin at the time, probably helped a little :-)). The opening hyper-powerful sound shook the whole room, and right after that, Rossingols conveyed the dreamy, immersive mood of the rest of the track, and did it just as convincingly as anything else before or after that.
Chuck Mangione’s “Children of Sanches” track proved to be perfect for Rossignol to showcase their dynamic capabilities. They delivered perfectly dry, fast drumming, expressive vocals, and tight, punctual bass. Again, the energy of the presentation was what made it different—superior to almost any other loudspeaker I’d ever heard before. Rossignols are storytellers, but they do so following a musician’s or singer’s lead. In this case, the narrator, Mangione’s trumpet, drove the story forward, smoothly changing the pace. It pierced my ears when needed, or sounded almost gentle. At all times, the insight into the intricate details of the performance, the timbre and texture of the leader’s instrument, was delivered with clarity and certainty—no hesitation, no nervousness in the presentation, just pure music and immersive emotions.
At some point, as my notes state, I played one of Victor Wooten’s tracks from “Show Of Hands 15” to confirm beyond any doubt what I suspected based on all the tracks played so far, as well as my experiences with other SoundSpace Systems’ models. Take any recording with powerful, yet purely recorded electric bass, and the Rossignol will deliver it with utmost clarity and precision—power and bite, passion and momentum—at a level that most people don’t even know is possible, no matter what kind of speakers they own or how expensive these are. When I changed the pace again, just a single track, “Come Together,” from Musica Nuda’s „Live a FIP“, was enough to realize that I had never before truly heard the double bass on it. The depth, the energy extending to the very lowest notes, the “density” of wood supporting each string pluck—all that Rossignol presented in a way that was absolutely natural, breathtaking, and it sent shivers down my spine.
The first vinyl record I listened to was… familiar „Piano Sketches”, one of the wonderful releases from Adam Czerwinski’s AC Records. The piano on it with Rossignols had such an incredibly deep, rich tone. It was completely free of any nervousness—powerful yet relaxed, sonorous and vibrant, yet precise. It sounded a bit dark, but realistically so, and this feature, just as in real life, was combined with amazing clarity. All the little details of the performance were there to grab without any effort, as the tonal and dynamic micro-contrasts were presented flawlessly and distinctly. That’s what made this sound so naturally rich, so intense, so convincing, and so deeply engaging.
Jerome Sabbagh’s album “Heart,” recorded with very precise instrument placement, was conveyed as the artist intended (I assume, as I’d once discussed with him his recordings and what he wanted to achieve with them). Saxophone in the left channel, drums in the right, and a gentle bass in the middle. Again, the texture and timbre of each instrument were presented in a very convincing, natural way. The flow of music, whether played with the Circle Labs amplifier or even more so with the SPEC, was naturally velvety. The dark background helped deliver all the tonal and textural intricacies of this very well-recorded performance with a level of precision and clarity that I had probably never heard before from this album.
In turn, “4 Wheel Drive”, an album by Danielsson (and others), caught my attention from the start with a powerful yet beautifully controlled trombone performance. It was a bit coarse and matte at the same time, but that’s how this instrument sounds in skillful hands (and mouths), and the Rossignols conveyed it perfectly. The vocals in the next track seemed palpable, almost as if present in the room with the rest of the musicians behind. Gentle drumming, deep while gentle piano, it all came together beautifully to create an amazingly natural flow of music.
I could keep on writing and writing about each track I listened to, but the text has already grown enormously. So let me speed things up a little and point out and confirm some features of the tested speakers. Clarity and remarkable resolution—these were the very first thoughts after Patricia Barber started to play. These speakers convey so much information, resolve so much detail and subtlety, and they do so in an almost unmatched manner. I had to listen to one track by Dżem, and I picked „Wehikuł czasu” from their acoustic album. Rossignols charmed me immediately with their rendition of the vocalist and, so natural, open, yet deep and saturated, sound of acoustic guitars. Musica Nuda „Come Together” – I got served a super-deep, powerful, colorful, dynamic bass! Pure, yet tonally rich, voice, as well as precisely placed voices from the public that joined momentarily. On top of that, a very natural-sounding applause, which is harder to reproduce convincingly than it would seem. Yet, SoundSpace Systems’ new loudspeakers seemed to offer it all in a super-coherent package, and they did it effortlessly.
Over these three days of listening to Rossignols for several hours a day, I found that every high-quality live recording sounded particularly convincing, realistic, and natural with the tested speakers. An ability to vanish from the room and leave the listener with a wide and deep soundstage filled with air, featuring large, palpable images of the performers, and adding to it a convincing rendering of the venue’s acoustics, the concert atmosphere, and the audience’s reactions, and to blend all those qualities perfectly with almost live-like dynamics is what makes these loudspeakers so incredibly addictive performers.
Summary
For most of my audiophile/music lover life, I stayed away from semi-active loudspeakers, and I had my reasons to, as most of them do not offer a truly coherent performance. With each tested model from the SoundSpace System’s range, my appreciation of this solution only grew. Michael proves it with every one of them that it can be done right, and the Rossignol seems to be the ultimate confirmation. These are some of the best speakers I’ve ever listened to, and the very best I’ve ever reviewed. Michael’s approach, which he mentioned in the interview, of choosing the best drivers for each part of the range and combining them into a coherent whole, worked incredibly well, and I would even say that he outdid himself.
The magnetostatic tweeter (with a little help from the other unit on the rear panel) delivers stunning treble—its clarity, high energy, richness, vividness, and openness are phenomenal. The four 12-inch woofers per channel, driven by two powerful Class D amplifiers and combined with a skillfully programmed DSP, deliver bass quality that only a handful (if any) passive speakers could compete with. Most importantly, the bass woofers work in absolute harmony with the other drivers, and, I’ll repeat it once more, it is rarely the case with semi-active designs. And then, there is the field-coil midrange, which is simply second to none.
Its resolution, clarity, precision, but also smoothness and richness are one of a kind, and this particular designer’s choice is what ultimately turned Rossignol into such remarkable performers and earned them a spot among the very best, cost-no-object speakers. Having said that, let me point out yet another advantage: high sensitivity. Why is it important? Because you can pair them with virtually any (top-quality, to be clear) amplifier(s), whether solid-state or tube or hybrid, even a low-output single-ended one(s). In other words, you can shape the performance, or the sound coming from the speakers, any way you like, while usually you need to worry about the amplifier to drive your chosen speakers properly.
What’s more, these are quite big speakers, and yet they disappear from the room, leaving the listeners alone with the music by sort of getting rid of all the electronic and mechanical aspects of the music playback. Even the room one uses them in, as it would seem from my Berlin experience, doesn’t have to be perfect. Give them enough space if you want them to fully spread their wings, to deliver thunderous, yet perfectly controlled bass, or put them in a smaller (by that I mean still at least 25–30 sqm) room, and they will still deliver stunning performance—one that wouldn’t be even possible with most other speakers. I realize how much they cost, and so I know that only very few can afford them, but if you are on the market for the cost-no-object loudspeakers, do yourself a favor and give the SoundSpace Systems Rossignol a try. Unless you have enough space for Aidoni, Rossignol might be what you need for the rest of your life to enjoy the music as you have never before.
Technical specifications (according to the manufacturer):
- System: 3-way with integrated active subwoofer
- Power consumption: 10-200 W
- Frequency range: 20 – 32.000 Hz
- Impedance: 6 ohms nominal, 3.2 ohms minimum
- Efficiency: 100 dB/W/m
- Maximum SPL: 112 dB
- Dimensions (HxWxD): 158x43x48 cm
- Weight: approx. 200 kg
Price (when reviewed):
- SoundSpace Systems Rossignol: €294.000
Manufacturer: SOUNDSPACE SYSTEMS
Associated equipment:
- Digital source: a custom passive server with WIN10, Roon, Fidelizer Pro 7.10, JCAT NET XE, and JCAT USB XE cards with FERRUM HYPSOS Signature power supply, KECES P8 (mono) linear power supply for the server, JCAT USB Isolator
- D/A Converter: LampizatOr Poseidon + Ideon Audio 3R Master Time (USB signal regenerator)
- Analog front end: J.Sikora Standard MAX turntable, J.Sikora KV12 & J.Sikora KV12 MAX tonearms, AirTight PC-3, Audio Technica PTG33 Prestige & LE SON LS10 MKII cartridges, Grandinote Celio MK IV & ESE Lab Nibiru V 5 phono stages.
- Power amplifiers: GrandiNote Shinai, Circle Labs M200, Art Audio Symphony II (modified)
- Preamplifier: Circle Labs P300
- Loudspeakers: GrandiNote MACH4, Ubiq Audio Model ONE Duelund Edition.
- Interconnects: Bastanis Imperial RCA x2, Soyaton Benchmark RCA, Hijiri Million Kiwami RCA, Hijiri HCI-20 RCA, TelluriumQ Ultra Black RCA, KBL Sound Himalaya 2 XLR, NxLT Ether XLR, David Laboga Custom Audio AKOYA USB, David Laboga Custom Audio Digital Sound Wave Sapphire Ethernet
- Speaker cables: Soyaton Benchmark Mk2, WK Audio TheRED
- Power cables: DL Custom Audio 3D-S-AC Connect, LessLoss DFPC Signature, Gigawatt LC-3
- Power: Gigawatt PF-2 MK2 and Gigawatt PC-3 SE Evo+; a custom power line with Gigawatt LC-Y in-wall cable; Gigawatt G-044 Schuko and Furutech FT-SWS-D (R)
- Network: Silent Angel Bonn N8 + Silent Angel Forester F1 + optical LAN isolator
- Racks: Base VI, Rogoz Audio 3RP3/BBS
- Anti-vibration accessories: ROGOZ-AUDIO SMO40 and CPPB16 platforms and ROGOZ AUDIO BW40MKII feet, OMEX Symphony 3S, Franc Accessories Ceramic Disc Slim Feet and Wood Block Platform
